What our Delegates Say:

"I would like to thank you for the Influencing Skills course you ran. The content and delivery was excellent and will certainly put into practice what I have learnt."Gregory Clarke - Propulsion, Auxiliary Supply and Power Supply Engineer - Southeastern Railway

"I was able to understand that not all people work the same as I do, and to go into a conversation / meeting etc knowing my audience a little better and adapting my communication to suit them!"Emma Bowdrey - UK E-Commerce Business Development Manager - Tech Data Limited

Influencing Skills Course Programme

We tailor all our courses to reflect the needs of the delegates on the day. The course content may include many of the exercises listed below, and any additional material that the trainers feel is relevant.

Introduction

Introduction by Impact Factory on our style of working.

Delegate Input

Here delegates will be asked what they specifically would like from the programme. We will let people know that the workshop is adaptable to their specific needs.

Setting the Influencing Scene

Who do you have to influence?

Where and with whom do you have to negotiate?

What currently happens?

Influencing Definition

Building on their preparation, delegates define influencing in small groups. This moves into a discussion on how people are influenced.

Types of Influencing

A very brief look at different influencing arenas and types of negotiations people may find themselves in.

Influencing and Communication Dynamics

What skills and qualities does a good influencer need? How can we use aspects of the dynamics of communication to increase the choices people have around influencing?

Here we will also introduce the idea of covert vs overt influencing.

The View from the Other Side

A key piece of work that uses a series of visuals to explore the idea that everyone sees the world differently. Not only does everyone see it differently, they think their view is the right one, and can't understand why someone does something that in a different way to them - it can feel completely alien and why would anyone want to do that?

The real skill is being able to see a problem from someone else's vantage point and deal with it from that place. Taking the time to see a situation from someone else's view gives us a great deal of information that we can use to influence them effectively and is much quicker than trying to convince the other person that you're right and they are wrong.

RASCAL

The six levers of influencing as described by Robert Cialdini – Reciprocity, Authority, Scarcity, Commitment, Agreement & Likeability. We’ll look at how they work and how you can use them in your working life.

Agree & Question

This is a simple listening and responding exercise that can have a powerful outcome. Examining the use of agreement, but not compromise, to diffuse conflict and, with the use of questions, move forward.

Trust Equation

Trust is broken down in to its constituent parts to help people understand how to grow it.

Aristotle’s 5-Point Plan

Here we structure a message to influence the recipient using a variation of what Aristotle first described over two thousand years ago.

Social Styles

There are many different psychometric systems, here we’ll take a light-touch view of the Bolton & Bolton social styles to help delegates see the different ways, different personalities can be influenced.

Stakeholder Grid

All influential people are sorted in to categories according to whether they are a Champion, Blocker, Fence Sitter or whether they are merely paying Lip Service to the delegate’s ideas.

ACID Test

Here delegates get to categorise which of the people they need to influence in to whose Agreement is needed, who needs to Contribute, who is going to Implement and who are the Decision makers.

Getting People to Do Things

Here is a simple way of structuring a message to get maximise your chances of influencing when time is short. Important – Pressure – Provoke Fear.

The Arc of Adoption

Sometimes known as the Diffusion of Innovation bell curve, it is a graph to illustrate where to focus your energies when influencing a group to adopt an idea.

Spheres of Influence

Delegates got a chance to look at the sphere of people they can influence and see how they can grow this sphere. And if not, what measures they can take to influence the people they need to influence whether they know them or not.

Yes And/No But

A simple group exercise for to help people see how replacing the word ‘but’ with ‘and’ can influence others in a conversation.

Them – Us – Me

When influencing up, people need to know what is the priority for senior people. This will help them to discover which factors they should focus on.